Getting a job—Methods and resources: Part I

How convenient that just as I'm ready to think about methods and resources for job hunting abroad, the UO Career Center would have a seminar on "International Job Search Strategies." I attended yesterday and got a ton of useful information, mostly suggestions for web resources that I otherwise might not have found.

The UO career librarian, Tina Haynes, mentioned the Electronic Network for Latin American Careers and Employment (ENLACE) from the University of Texas. This site really peaked my interest considering I aim to get a job somewhere in Latin America.

The site lists links to a number of organizations and companies offering internships, fellowships, volunteer opportunities and employment listings. It's very easy to navigate, and the job links are nicely separated into categories: government, higher education, international organizations, NGO's, nonprofits, private sector and think tanks.

I was also directed to The Riley Guide, "a massive repository of links to career and job-hunting resources as well as useful career-related articles," maintained by Margaret Dikel (Battey, 89).

I really wish I would have found this site sooner. It offers information on everything from job search methods to tips for interviews and contract negotiations.

Particularly relevant to this post, and this blog, is the article on "How to Use the Internet in Your Job Search". Dikel lists a number of reasons for extending your job hunt online that I'd like to highlight here:

• You can access the Internet at any time, any hour.
• "There are no geographic limits" to the Internet
• "Using the Internet in your search demonstrates leading-edge skills."
• The Internet can foster relationships with others in your field or region of interest.
• "The Internet can help you explore career alternatives and options that you maybe haven't considered."

I hope that by actively using the Internet in my job hunt that I can take advantage of all the benefits listed above.

I still have a lot more to say on Internet job search strategies and resources, so stay tuned for tomorrow's blog.

Print Sources

Battey, Jim. "Online job-hunting resource sites." InfoWorld 22.29 (2000): 89.

Getting a job—Agency vs. self-placement: Part II

Continued from February 26, 2007

Today I want to pick up where I left off and discuss the forum posts I found regarding Footprints Recruiting.

While Footprints had me at hello, it didn’t have me for long thanks to the earnesty of online discussion forums. In one post from TESall.com, the author discusses how Footprints placed her in horrible working conditions. She also points out something I previously hadn’t considered: Letting a recruiter place you with an employer that you haven’t talked to or investigated could potentially be much more risky than heading abroad and doing it yourself.

Recruiters will likely give you minimal input when negotiating your contract, and may place you in a school that suits their needs more than your own. I can’t help but wonder if schools are willing to pay recruiters a fee because they can negotiate low paying contracts that will end up compensating for fees paid.

The next post basically says that Footprints isn’t trustworthy and cares more about commissions than teachers. It offers the following advice, which I’ve heard from other experienced teachers abroad and am becoming increasingly convinced of:

I recommend contacting schools directly, talking to other teachers who are already in the country where you want to teach for job leads, sucking up the cost and flying out to the country and looking around yourself. Jobs are plentiful, don't get caught up in the recruiter trap.”

In fact, there is general distaste for recruiters among the TEFL community, mostly because they are assuming a middle man position where one not need exist.

From everything I’ve heard and read so far, it really sounds like you can negotiate a much better situation and salary if you take a do-it-yourself approach. Though it may require a lot more work at first, the experience you gain and the job itself will probably be worth it in the long run.

Getting a job—Agency vs. self-placement: Part I

So let’s assume you’re certified and have your resume ready to go. Now how do you get a job?

There are a lot of organizations out there willing to place you in a teaching position, usually for a not-so-small fee. Bridge-Linguatec, for example, offers TEFL job placement for $620. Alliance Abroad offers job placement packages that include accomodations, meals and other necessities but cost a ton—$3300 to volunteer your services in Costa Rica for 13 weeks!

So, when I happened upon Footprints Recruiting, Inc., which claims to be “a FREE ESL Teacher Placement Agency,” I was both interested and suspicious. What’s the catch?

According to the website, there isn’t one. The company charges the employers a fee for sending qualified teachers to their schools, but does not take a portion of my wages nor charge me any hidden fees.

It offers placements in four continents (Asia, Europe, Africa or South America) and claims to offer lesson plan support, visa assistance, contract negotiations, country orientations and more!

This sounds great, especially considering the high price tag on other placement services. But, before I get sucked in to all the benefits listed on the company webpage, I better calm down and investigate it as thoroughly as I did the online TEFL providers.

I checked out the company’s Better Business Bureau record and found that it has had 0 complaints within the last 36 months. So far, so good.

I then looked for online forums and found a very helpful series of posts on Footprints Recruiting from TESall.com. One post says, “I've heard they are indeed reputable. My TESOL instructor recommended them, and i have a friend who is headed over to korea next week after dealing with them...”

Another post rants about “illegal hiring criteria,” upset by the fact that Footprints Recruiting “restricts their jobs to degree holders only even though the country or posting may not require a degree.” That doesn’t bother me, since a company or school is entitled to request whatever qualification it wants. It is not, in fact, illegal to do so. Actually, knowing that the company requires applicants to have a degree increases my confidence in the service. It indicates to me that qualifications supersede commissions.

I was starting to feel seduced by the promise of free and easy job placement when I came upon several very negative posts that really got me thinking, not just about Footprints Recruiting but about recruitment agencies in general. I’ll discuss my newly aroused reservations in tomorrow’s blog.

To be continued . . .

Creating an internationally accessible resume

Now that you’ve made sure your resume is culturally acceptable, you need to make sure it’s accessible online to employers around the world.

As I’ve done, you can create your own online resume website, but employers won’t likely find it unless directed to it by an e-mail or cover letter.

A more “all-inclusive” approach would be to post your resume to a job hunt engine like Monster.com, which has an international job site where you can post your resume or CV.

There’s also Careerbuilder.com, which features four country-specific job sites and links to a number of country-specific partner sites that also allow you to post your resume online.

Making Yourself Accessible Through Online Video

If you intend to apply from here in the U.S., like me, you might consider providing an online video interview along with your resume. Personal interaction gives in-country applicants an edge, but a video can make you and your personality more accessible to the employer and thereby better your chances.

In Teaching English Abroad, Susan Griffith says that the effort and expense of sending a video abroad is not worth it unless “(a) a school has expressed some interest and (b) you can make a good impression on an amateur video” (105).

However, by posting it online, you eliminate the expense of sending a video abroad and the concern that it might get damaged. Also, with today’s technology, you can create a semi-professional looking video by taking advantage of video editing software like Final Cut Pro for Mac or Adobe Premiere for PC. They are both fairly user friendly and though expensive, they both offer trial versions for 30 days—long enough to complete a project such as this.

I also prefer the idea of posting a video online because in most countries, an employer can more easily watch your video at a computer in his or her office than he can sit down to watch it with a VCR or DVD player.

Yet another benefit is that you can link to your video from online resumes that you may post at sites like those discussed above. For hard copy resumes, I simply intend to cite the link in my cover letter and hope employers choose to visit it.

Look for my video interview, which I intend to post on my blog site within the next couple of weeks. Maybe it can give you ideas, or even better, you can send me ideas on how to improve it!

Print Sources

Griffith, Susan. Teaching English Abroad: Teach Your Way Around the World. 8th Edition. Oxford: Vacation Work, 2006.

Creating an internationally acceptable resume: Part II

(Continued from February 22, 2007)

Mary Anne Thompson notes that "most multinational companies will expect you to speak the languages of their country and English," and recommends that you prepare a version of your resume in both languages.

That's a relief. I'd wondered at times whether my Spanish-speaking skills could actually hurt my chances; I thought employers might assume I'd use Spanish too freely in the classroom and not provide enough English speaking experience to the students. As it turns out, most sources say that most employers consider speaking the language a bonus.

Thompson also points out that "companies want to 'see' and 'hear' actual proof of your language skills." I'm more comfortable with writing in Spanish than speaking, but I think I can get along alright. Much harder than speaking is comprehending what native speakers are saying. You just don't get the needed colloquial experience in a university setting. In any case, this tells me I need to practive my speaking and comprehension skills more before I go.

Another aspect to creating a global resume that I never would have even considered is that "paper sizes are different dimensions in different countries." You mean every country in the world doesn't subscribe to the 8 1/2 x 11 format? It's important to reformat your document for the recipient so he or she can print it out with ease.

I was also surprised to learn from The Complete Guide to International Jobs and Careers, which is also partially available as an online e-book, that many international employers expect a 5-8 page resume. Some employers may perceive the 1-page resume accepted here in the U.S. as showing slackness.

If you're still wanting more info on international resume preparation, Monster.com offers a succinct article on International Resume Choices.

In my next blog I'll go beyond talking about resume acceptability and discuss accessibility. How can you take the greatest advantage of the Internet and sharing technologies to make your resume available to employers worldwide?

Print Sources

Krannich, Ron and Caryl. The Complete Guide to International Jobs and Careers. Manassas Park, VA: Impact Publications, 1992.

Thompson, Mary Anne. The Global Resume and CV Guide: Advice from the Experts in Executive Search and Recruitment. Canada: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2000.

Creating an internationally acceptable resume: Part I

In The Global Resume and CV Guide: Advice from the Experts in Executive Search and Recruitment, Mary Anne Thompson offers invaluable advice on creating an internationally acceptable resume. Some of her tips can even be found online at Job Web, yet another excellent resource.

Thompson recommends that when job hunting abroad, you “find out what is appropriate vis-a-vis the corporate culture, the country culture, and the culture of the person making the hiring decision.”

In my case, I’ll be applying for jobs in a number of countries. That begs the question: What do I do when what is culturally acceptable in Costa Rica, for example, is not acceptable in Argentina? That, Thompson writes, is the challenge. I must come up with a resume that is simultaneously acceptable to a variety of cultures.

While creating a great global resume requires research on the norms of a specific region, Thompson offers broader advice on cultural variations that applies in any case. I highly recommend that you check it out. I already found a number of things I did incorrectly when drafting my own global resume, and I assume many other North Americans make the same mistakes.

Because “education requirements differ from country to country...stating the title of your degree will not be an adequate description.” Oops...in my increasingly apparent, ethnocentric way, I just assumed that everyone knew what Journalism and Spanish degrees from the University of Oregon entail.

While the U.S. and other countries prefer work experience listed in reverse-chronological order, some countries may prefer chronological listings (i.e. “’oldest’ work experience” to most recent). I found a way to figure out this particular by visiting Yahoo Answers, which has an array of country links listed at the bottom of every page. I selected Argentina, for an example, and then searched “resume” to come up with the following advice:

“Un resume, no difiere mucho de un curriculum en español, solo tienes que poner tus datos generales, luego tu experiencia profesional empezando por el trabajo mas reciente, la experiencia academica, algunos cursos, idiomas y paquetes de computo que manejes y referencias personales.”

For those who don’t speak Spanish, this essentially tells me the elements that my Argentinian resume should include and that I should start with my most recent job—”el trabajo mas reciente”—and work my way down.

Obviously, speaking the language of my intended destination helped in this instance, but don’t distress if you’re English-only. By simply Googling “international resume (insert country name here),” you’re sure to come up with tips written in English but tailored to your destination. Just to show how easy the Internet makes this task, I’ve included links to a few articles on country-specific resume requirements:

• Japan: Resume and Rirekisho
  
• Spain: Find a “Real” Job in Spain
  
• Australia: Guide to writing a great Australian resume/cv
  
• France: French Résumés—Le CV français

Print Sources

Thompson, Mary Anne. The Global Resume and CV Guide: Advice from the Experts in Executive Search and Recruitment. Canada: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2000.

To be continued . . .

Getting certified: Part VI—Are we there yet?

I’ll try to keep my assessment of the other major TEFL players brief, since I know that you and I both are getting anxious to sign up for a program.

International TEFL Teacher Training (ITTT) has what is, in my opinion, a bad user interface. The site has highlighted text and elements that light up when I mouse over them but do not allow me to link through to the desired information. Very frustrating. The home page is text heavy, and the graphics are amateurish.

On the positive side, it offers a 100-hour online certificate, which is the most time-intensive online certificate I’ve found yet. However, I can’t imagine 100 hours of trying to navigate through what I assume, by the looks of the website, will be a poorly organized program. Another benefit of ITTT is that it offers job placement services at no extra cost, a rarity among online providers.

It is accredited by the International Association of TESOL Qualifying Organizations (IATQUO), which already raised a red flag in my mind since I read somewhere that there is no international TEFL accrediting body. I then read the following on the blog I reference earlier:

“IATQUO or the International Accreditation of TESOL Qualifying Organisations is one of those clever little schemes where a school decides it can’t get accreditation through the usual channels so they set up their own accrediting agency...”

While the prospect of job placement assistance is very attractive, a disagreeable interface and sketchy accreditation make me say NO thank you to ITTT.

As for the International Teacher Training Organization (ITTO), it has a decent user interface. Like i-to-i and Bridge-Linguatec, it charges $295 for its basic online TEFL course of about 40 hours.

It offers certificate recipients the opportunity to go to Guadalajara for 5 days of in-classroom experience, but does not discuss the strings attached. The website only says to “please contact us for the exact fees.” Exact fees? I don’t even see the inexact fees listed anywhere.

Like ITTT, ITTO offers free job placement to its students, but I can’t help but feel like they are both compensating for something. It’s like the small man syndrome of TEFL courses. All the unsubstantiated promises and hyperbolic sales points scare me rather than convince me.

Also, while ITTO is a member of several ESL institutions, it doesn’t appear to be accredited. If anyone finds out otherwise, please let me know.

So what will it be?

Though there are a lot more providers out there—enough to warrant a book rather than a blog—I am ready to take the plunge. I am going to go with the Bridge-Linguatec online TEFL course, with the Business English and Young Learners endorsements. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on how it goes.